Drug delivery systems are available in a great variety of shapes and forms, among the most common of which are coated compressed hard tablets, caplets and filled gelatin capsules. The use of gelatin capsules for the encapsulation of medicinal agents has been a popular method for administering drugs because many patients prefer to swallow capsules and caplets rather than tablets.
Caplets are solid, oblong tablets which, although very popular as a drug delivery vehicle, have not reached the same level of consumer acceptance gelatin capsules once had. To solve this problem, the pharmaceutical industry has sought to combine the consumer acceptance of a capsule shape with a caplet.
Several proposals have suggested forming caplets and subsequently coating them to simulate a capsule-like medicament. One such proposal is represented by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,089,270 and 5,213,738 assigned to the present assignee. Other proposals are represented by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,820,524; 4,928,840 and 5,146,730. None of these proposals contemplate producing capsule-like medicaments by individually covering first one end of a caplet with a hard shell capsule half and shrinking the capsule half onto the caplet, and then covering the other end of each caplet with a second hard shell capsule half and shrinking the capsule half onto the caplet, without contacting the first shrink-wrapped capsule half, to form a gelatin covered caplet.